You know, that's actually a very good point that didn't cross my mind for some reason. XCOM in harder difficulties if all about setting up the perfect Alpha Strike to take down the most dangerous threats before the enemy even gets a turn. Good players even know how to abuse the way opponents move when combat starts, by placing your soldiers in flanking positions before triggering the fight. It... somewhat makes sense in XCOM, because you're doing infiltration most of the time - so you're "surprising" the enemy and killing them before they react.
This is one of the biggest criticism I had in Mutant Year Zero too - it was all about Alpha Strikes. Spot a patrol, wait for them to split, kill one disable another, get out of combat (resetting the cooldowns on your skills). Rinse and repeat.
In Fire Emblem & VC, combat start as soon as you deploy on the map. So the problem of Alpha Striking is a little less present (although you can easily abuse AI by camping right outside their range and send one bait, have all opponents attack the tank, next turn you slaughter them).
With individual initiative, these problems don't disappear - but they do get lessened. It's harder to abuse your enemies because each member of your party acts at different times, and one monster playing between two of them can ruin your plans.
That being said, party initiative makes sense for BG3 for a very good reason - multiplayer. Allowing every player to act at the same time significantly cuts down the time needed for combats, which is an issue every D&D player encountered on tabletop in the past (unless you exclusively play with veterans who know exactly what they want to do). However, I also think you're onto something with the "players will just reload until they win initiative". We all know those games where there is a large RNG factor in a hard fight, and people are just "if the boss uses X skill twice in a row, just reload" - here we might end up with "if the boss won initiative, you're boned, reload".
All and all, no best solution here. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't interested in seeing how it plays out for BG3.
I understand what you mean with it cutting the time needed for combats in multiplayer, but I would argue its not that significant. Of course, theoretically, every character can move/attack/etc. at the same time, which saves a lot of time, but the fact that its still turn-based makes it so that probably only counts for low difficulties. With harder fights, it´s probably just smarter to let your ally do his move, watch him, see if what he wanted to do succeeds or not, and then decide what you want to do.
Do I need to run to this enemy or is my friend going to kill it? Do I need to run in and kill bad-guy or is my wizard going to cast an AOE in which I do not want to stand?
In my opinion, it might even slow combat down, because of the fact that you can decide in which order your characters act, which means you have WAY more possibilities. Like should character A attack first, and maybe kill the enemy so character B can attack another one, or is it smarter to let B kill the enemy and A does something else? Who has the better hit chances? Who has better options for other stuff if he doesnt need to use his action to kill the enemy?
So I think in lower difficulties/easier fights it will probably speed it up quite significantly (in multiplayer atleast), but if you have a tough bossbattle or are just playing at a high difficulty where you need to take every fight seriously, it probably wont do much.
"Players will abuse the system" is never a good reason to not include something in a game:
1) "Abusing" something is a choice; people can choose differently.
2) What qualifies as "abuse" for one person is "normal" for someone else.
3) It's the player's game. They can and should be able to play their game as they see fit.
Oh I dont have a problem with "players CAN abuse the system" I have a problem with "players are highly encouraged to abuse the system" because lets be real, if it has a difficulty setting thats comparable to tactician in divinity, youre screwed if EVERY enemy gets a turn before you do. So if its like "you can abuse it if you have a hard time" I dont have a problem, if its "one of your party members is dead if you loose initiative" I do have a problem with it.
Lets say you COULDNT abuse it, lets say you CANT reload just because you failed iniatiative: Is it a bad feature if players can not circumvent it? Then its still a bad feature when players are forced to.
So to 1). In my opinion, if I have the CHOICE to abuse it its fine, if I feel like I HAVE to, its not. I just think its not a good idea to implement a feature that swings combat in such a strong way, if said feature is completly random.
@Hatox: I shared similar fears, but during their AMA Larian explained that they were aware of the potential team initiative Alpha Strike issue - and that they are trying to solve it by having larger combat arenas. Verticality also helps in that regard, adding another layer of distance between the two groups.
One thing to keep in mind is that you'll likely be the one triggering most of the fights anyway, so you can position your party members carefully before as to avoid the "I lost initiative, I'm dead" part. As for the fights you aren't triggering, they are likely to be scripted encounters - meaning whoever is working on that specific encounter can be extra careful placing the monsters to avoid a potential one turn wipe for the player if they lose initiative.
I think they should change the name, its a D&D game but it's not a Baldur's gate game, turn based alone changes that. Looks cool although they did say they were the first game to use height and thought of this game. I really liked the BG story but they seem to focusing alot more on combat, and thought they would have way more races classes to choose from, as thought they would go bigger and better than BG2.
I personally more looking forward to the new pathfinder game.
I am looking forward to both. I am disappointed that BG3 will not be as faithful, on the wrong side of the seriousness/silliness spectrum to me(seriously dip a bow in fire and fire unlimited fire arrows?), and that will hurt (it will also hurt if they do 5E FR and dont have a bladsinger).
Having said that i am going to love playing the heck out of it, just like Solasta.
I am looking forward to BG3 because I like coop games, a friend and I have played a lot of games together.
Did anyone watch the Gameplay Stream yesterday? https://www.twitch.tv/videos/654892684
Quite a good amount of stuff being revealed here, I wish them showed the Character Creator again T_T I noticed that Shadowheart cast both Guiding Bolt (Action) and Healing Word (Bonus Action) in the same round in the first fight, intentional rule change or little mistake?
Also, I was a bit surprised how when you're playing the companions you suddenly become mute. It's absolutely understandable to avoid recording millions of lines, but the fact that they are voiced when you talk TO them vs when you play AS them is a little weird.
Still, the game looks fantastic, can't wait to get in the Early Access!
That has to be a mistake. According to the Rules on page 202 of the Players Handbook, you can't cast another spell during the same turn, except for a cantrip with a casting time of 1 action.
Well they already showed that they use the original rules more as "guidelines", I can totally see them dropping this rule because it seems over complicated, but I hope they dont, because its an insane buff to full spellcasting characters, and certain spells in particular. Like they did in the stream, you can e.g. misty step to get into a better position and still use another spell which makes misty step WAY better for fullcasters.
Also I hope they change the spell UI to the way solasta does it. Instead of just one bar with all your spells that you can sort and have to flip through the pages its so much user-friendlier that solasta just sorts by LvL of the spell :D
One thing I noticed (this is some high lvl criticism and I can totally understand if they wont put this in), the streamer had problems once because he couldnt target an enemy with fireball because he had no line of sight to him, but, as far as I know, spells like that are centered on a point, not on a point on the ground. You should technically be able to aim the fireball 10 feet above the enemy into the air to circumvent cover. Now I can understand that aiming something into the middle of the air is probably really hard to code in a way thats not totally weird to use. If I remember correctly there were some things in XCOM (Like moving in the air) that can just be targeted to any point in the air because everything was still put into "fields" there, but it was really hard to get the character to exactly where you want, so thats definetly a feature which would be great if implemented corerctly, but I can completly understand if theyre like "this is to hard to implement in a way thats not horrible to use, so well skip it"^^
I'm very excited about that game as well.
I mean it's an official D&D computer game, so I want it, but this looks like we're finally going to get a really good official dandy computer game again. What was the last? D&D Tactics? Storms of Zehir? Neither Daggerdale nor Sword Coast Legends. Ah yes, Mysteries of Westgate. Well at least we had a lot of OGL games right... Well we have them now too, nice. We can just leave the twenty-tens behind and look to the future of good dandy games. What's this, a third era of greatness?
So i enjoyed the heck out of the BG3 EA, looking back on this thread what do you all think?
The story and settings are cool, but i want to bypass all the fight is not 5e D&D and same rule are not implemented in the right way. I don't want to scribe a heal scroll on my wizard!!!